Abstract
The periodic arrangement of atoms known to physicists as the solid state has long been the playground of condensed matter physicists, materials scientists, electrical engineers, and the various other experts involved in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. In the atomically thin limit, that is, a single sheet of atoms arranged in a crystalline lattice, the physics that govern particle and quasiparticle behavior are compressed from the three spatial dimensions we live in down to two. In this state, many new and interesting phenomena emerge as a result of the reduced dimensionality, and it is the physics of such two-dimensional materials that concerns this thesis.
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Notes
- 1.
In this section, units are selected such that ħ = 1.
- 2.
Conceding that one of these layers is technically not the thickness of a single atom, one could more precisely call this a crystalline monolayer or a van der Waals monolayer, although the distinction is typically irrelevant for situations in which the electronic behavior is still governed by 2D physics. Hence, for the purposes of this thesis, the term monolayer will be used to refer to a single crystalline monolayer, with three atomic planes in cases dealing with transition metal dichalcogenide materials.
- 3.
Trigonal prismatic coordination of the chalcogens is found in the 2H polytype of TMD crystals; others are also possible but will not feature in the thesis.
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de la Barrera, S.C. (2017). Introduction. In: Layered Two-Dimensional Heterostructures and Their Tunneling Characteristics. Springer Theses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69257-9_1
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